


A Symphony in the Twilight

by StellaCorvus



Category: No Straight Roads (Video Game)
Genre: Abandoned Child, Attachment, Baroque Music, Birds, Character Study, Confused Parenting, Confused Parenting Intensifies, Gen, Lack of Understanding Children, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Motherly love, Musical Instruments, Orphan - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Parent-Child Relationship, Security Blanket, Storm - Freeform, Strict Parenting, Tatiana is OC's Adoptive Mother, coming-of-age story, fear of failure, harpsichord, vague humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:34:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28402551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StellaCorvus/pseuds/StellaCorvus
Summary: When she came to control Vinyl City, Tatiana Qwartz ruled it with an iron fist in the hope of destroying any connection she had to rock music and to her former band, the Goolings. So, when a girl believed to be no older than the age of one ends up abandoned on the literal doorstep of the NSR Tower, Tatiana is forced to make a decision that could not only change her life but the way she rules the city through NSR: search for the person who abandoned the child and give her up or keep the child and raise her as her own.Includes Character Introduction ("Nocturne"): RAVE.n challenges the Lights Up Audition to take her place among the stars to be one of NSRs music elites.
Kudos: 7





	1. Nocturne

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> RAVE.n makes her first appearance on international television to officially audition for NSR. Not only is she going to be judged by NSRs elite music artists, but also by Madame Tatiana Qwartz. The pressure is on!

A small middle-aged lady boredly draped herself over the back of the camera, staring at the strange person dressed in a rather gaudy blue and black suit, head hidden behind a bird skull and a crown of what had likely been authentic raven feathers. It hardly seemed a way for the camerawoman to conduct herself, especially in front of just _who_ this auditioner was, but that was of no matter. All that was needed was her name, her instrument, and a brief description of both herself and the music she would be playing. It was simple enough.

…right?

When the skull-masked young adult believed she had fully prepared herself for the television spot she would be filming, she turned back toward the camera with a vague smile to notify the woman that she was anticipating the beginning of the recording.

“Are you ready…?”, the lady drawled in an obviously unamused tone, “If not, you should be.”

When she nodded her head, a red light had begun blinking on the camera to notify that she was now being recorded. Her sheepish demeanor flashed by in an instant and she suddenly flipped her personality to its excited mask. “Hello to you all,” she theatrically brought her arms out like a pair of wings, “My name is Rave-N, and the instrument that I play is a harpsichord, an old beast from the Baroque era,” she moved her fingers as though she were gliding them along piano keys, “The genre of music that I will be playing is something I think very few people know about but a lot would love to see. It’s a little something _I_ like to call ‘Baroque coldtrance’, a combination of the Baroque style and trance music. I’m going to _freeze_ you to your seats with my mysterious nocturne!”

RAVE.n twisted on her taloned heels professionally, her arms brought into a position around her upper torso that hovered above her face and below her chest like a dancing bird. Tonight was going to be _hers_.

When the recording finished, the lady – still apparently unamused by the young adult – she wasted no time telling her to move on to the audition stage. “Okay. That’s good. Just follow the arrows to the audition stage. Thank you.”

Finally able to breathe, RAVE.n stepped calmly out of the spotlight and made her way toward a long corridor perpendicular to the dressing room, returning to her deceptively timid character. _Why did the hallway have to be so_ long _?_ It was not helping her nerves out at all, certainly increasing her trepidation as moments went by, but the thought had also crossed her mind that it was a sort of test of how steeled ones nerves really were.

After all, she would be meeting a panel of judges who are known as the elite stars of the NSR record company. There was little left to the imagination as she attempted to keep herself calm before her audience. She _rehearsed_. She refused to believe that anything would go wrong. She was supposed to be her mothers perfect daughter. If she was inadequate, _well_ …

Before she knew it, RAVE.n stood before a towering bright light that encompassed her utterly, eyes bright with an almost incomprehensible combination of emotions. This was it. It was finally time. All of her years of practicing on the harpsichord culminated into this moment.

When her eyes adjusted to the brightness of the light, she eyed _her_ harpsichord sitting front and center on stage, a spotlight shown on it as though showcasing it in all its glory, surrounded by the enticed audience and the four judges laying in wait at their darkened perches above the auditioner: a former professor of astronomy-turned disc jockey, a group of five almost identical robots designed like Navy sailors, a lady just some years older than her with an abstract manner of dress, and the walking elegance that was the executive of NSR – _her mother_.

Yet, that was not her mother _tonight_ , however. Instead it was a judge grading her with even higher expectations than any of the musical artists under her employment.

Stepping out onto an elevated platform before the stage, her blue-violet gaze was trained upward to the judges, unfazed by the clamor and cheers of the audience, standing before her harpsichord as she faced the panel. She frowned, but the mask hid it well.

“Well, hello, young lady,” the executive of NSR told her slowly in an all-encompassing, powerful voice.

RAVE.n bowed, hands down before her lower chest. “Good evening, Madame. My name is Rave-N. ‘Rave’ means what you think it does, and the ‘N’ makes it a play on terms for ‘raven’. That’s my theme and that’s my music.”

The imposing monolith of a woman that stood as the sole executive of NSR, a businesswoman in every stretch of the imagination, who always kept herself in the highest regard and expected others to do the same. Madame Tatiana Qwartz. She not only kept high expectations for the musical artists signed onto her record company, but she brought even higher expectations upon the young woman who stood on stage before the judges now.

Tatiana clicked her tongue and leaned forward in her chair. Her shades glinted in the spotlights, but all that RAVE.n could see of her face was the almost utterly straight lips that curved into a frown from her low angle of perspective. “Clever,” she muttered loudly enough to be stage whispered, then raising her voice to an audible level, “What is it that you will be playing for us today, _Rave-N_? I would like to hope that it will certainly be _better_ than your name.” Vague gasps had come from the audience, likely due to her open mockery, but were quieted almost instantaneously.

She really _was_ going to be hard on RAVE.n, but RAVE.n was equally as prepared to play hardball. The young adult turned on her heels and brought herself to the bench before bringing her fingers to the keys, fully prepared for the next few moments. She knew that her mother was beside herself with delight when she told her that she would be on auditioning to be a star of NSR, but the businesswoman showed none of that motherly love. Instead, it was full of scrutinizing gazes and intense observations to make sure that the young adult was properly prepared for a spotlight as an elite in one of the most cutthroat record companies in the world. “I’m going to be playing for you all something _new_ to E-D-M. I call it ‘Baroque coldtrance’. It’s a mixture of the Baroque-era style and trance genre. My harpsichord doubles as an equalizer that dictates the sound of the strings,” she narrowed her eyes, “…you might be mocking my name now, Madame, but when it’s all said and done, _you_ will be clapping for _me_.”

“We will see about that,” Tatiana contested all too quietly, leaning back into her chair and bringing her hands together on the podium before her, enunciating her voice louder, “It’s time to … “

“ _Start the arena!_ ”, the audience completed as RAVE.n readied her fingers on the black keys of the raven-styled harpsichord, a black monstrosity covered in feathers carved out of Lightning Ridge opal and carefully crafted with platinum and silver. The baseline beat began to play from the surround sound system, and a security bot made its appearance at the far end of the stage near the podium.

_Too easy_. RAVE.n kept her focus strictly upon Tatiana, oblivious to the audience around her or the other judges as her fingers stroked the black and white keys of the harpsichord, paying little attention to the security bot as the melodic strings of the harpsichord overloaded it. She snorted and lifted her chin in pride, but her defiance urged Madame Tatiana to command more security bots to attack. They operated at different times, yet moved in synchronization with the music. Her internal metronome clicked as soon as the two bots made their moves according to the beat, but she quickly overloaded _their_ circuits with each press of just a few keys.

It was not long before drones began appearing, all manner of machine blocking her and the judges panel as though she were caught in at the front of some battle in war, but the gaze of RAVE.n was still perfectly trained upon the burning red-violet eyes of one calmly furious Madame. It was not surprising that the audience had not caught on, instead fully enraptured by the young adults musical talent, enthralled all the more at her great diligence and seemingly perfect focus.

The judges, on the other hand, were perceptive enough to begin to realize how Tatiana was treating this particular auditioner compared to other contestants that graced the stage with their rather mediocre performances. Despite their willingness to object, Tatiana shut down their responses immediately as she kept an eye on the auditioner that decorated the stage with her repeated killing blows to the security bots that could hardly make a move before she shot them down with a series of flying devices that resembled metallic paper airplanes.

Each key she hit caused the bird-like machines to move in a corresponding direction, seeking the drones out for the noise they made or the heat they exerted from the expended energy of their propellers. Crossing her arms over one another, she kept one hand on the top row of keys to keep attacking with the black drones, leaving the other hand relegated to the lower keys to attack the security bots. Her blue-violet eyes never left Tatiana, paying no attention to the other judges and remaining fully oblivious to the cheers and hurrahs of the audience.

Her gaze was accusing, as though what Madame Tatiana provided for her to play her music against was not even enough for her to stretch her fingers. As if on cue, when RAVE.n cleared the stage of any activated machine, leaving behind nothing but scrap metal and debris, she was given two celebratory horns elevated on a tall post to play her dual-handed chromatic scale on to activate the second phase of the audition. It was only bound to be harder from this point on, and if she so much as _looked_ down at her keys or even missed a single _C sharp_ , she knew Tatiana would immediately give her an “X”, no matter how well she did in the rest of the performance. The state of her grading was practically leveraged on the businesswoman alone.

At that, she was not about to risk it, so she persevered. The pressure was on and the stakes were high.

She knew that the judges were marking down both discrepancy or something of enjoyment, likely making sure to weigh the pros and cons of her performance, but she knew that Madame Tatiana would be keeping her red-violet eyes solely upon her, hands folded together on the podium and chin lifted upward in seemingly arrogant defiance, as if the entire performance were beneath her. Yet, RAVE.n _knew_ she was listening, no matter how she presented herself.

When a round of three towers, each of which exposing a series of pegs according to the obnoxious beat in the provided song, had signalled the coming of the next phase, RAVE.n adapted and used another tactic. With rapid planning, she devised that her flying devices would be perfect for use because they listened to noise and sensed the heat caused by friction from the movement of the pegs. At this, she quickly remapped her options to activate the birds on both keyboards instead of solely on the top one. “Let’s see how you like this,” she muttered softly before she brought her fingers back to the keys to continue her nocturne.

The flying drones, which glided like the most silent of birds, flew toward their targets as their targets advanced toward the harpsichord sluggishly. She trusted that these flying drones would do the work for her, allowing her trained focus to remain upon Tatiana.

She derisively mouthed, “ _Is that all_?”, to the sole executive of NSR before she noticed Tatiana having a distinct change in demeanor, a grimace on her face, but there was no reply. RAVE.n smirked and continued gliding her fingers across the keys. She knew that by provoking the ire of Madame Tatiana she would elicit her fury, and for the young adult to do such a thing was purely of intention.

As her machines detonated on the moving towers as though they were antimatter reacting to matter, they had been left as nothing but a combination of black and silvery scrap metal. A necessary sacrifice, but her birds were like ticking bombs, seeking heat and noise. However, her troubles only grew, and not only had more of these silvery towers been summoned to the stage, but so had a number of drones which hovered by their little propellors.

“More of the same, huh?”, she told herself as she readied her gloved hands once more. With each passing second, her harpsichord began to sustain damage from the ammunition fired by the drones while her birds kept the leisurely towers at bay. The drones were more quick than they had been in the previous phase, which could have just been the beginning of Madames fury.

The judges muttered and murmured amongst themselves as Tatiana remained unwavering in her intense resolve to make the audition as difficult as possible for this special auditioner. If anyone knew the inner workings of the Lights Up Audition from such _involved_ research of it, it would be RAVE.n, so the difficulty had to be adjusted accordingly. She had to _flinch_ somehow, and it was obvious that Madame would be absolutely sure to make that happen.

It was not long before the audition seemed that it was a battle of wills between RAVE.n and Madame Tatiana Qwartz. In that instant, no one else seemed to exist – audience cheers fluttered away as though fading into memory, the faces of three judges staring down upon her and muttering softly or writing their critiques suddenly vanishing, even the robots and drones seemed to fade away. For the young adult, she fell into what seemed to her as a sort of practice, a _routine_ , having gone over her nocturne so many times that it felt like muscle memory.

All that was left was her years of practice playing the harpsichord in her mothers conservatory, watching familiar bright eyes of red-violet gazing down upon her from just opposite the great instrument. _“I see you’re learning. You’re hardly making any mistakes this_ _time,"_ she remembered her mother told her once.

The fledgling harpsichordist never stopped staring at her, knowing that she would be chided and disciplined for looking down at the keyboard to see where her fingers were in comparison to the keys. She knew better than to be like everyone else, showing true mastery at the harpsichord by not viewing the keyboard at all. Having been blindfolded multiple times weaned her off of wanting to look at the keys to see where her fingers were as a sort of habit, learning that it would be weak to look at the keys or even to _think_ about them. Now, she knew were they were and her muscle memory did the rest of the work.

_“Don’t look down and do_ not _close your eyes. Closing your eyes shows weakness and my child is and will do no such thing,”_ she told her as the thirteen year-old stared expressionlessly at her, utterly focused upon the stalwart face of the monolith that was her mother. _“Play Bachs Prelude and Fugue number two in C minor. I know you know that one.”_ She remembered the fugue had gone without error, but her fingers occasionally tripped over one another during the prelude, to which her mother forced her to start all over again until she could play it without fault. It caused her so much grief to play the music without error, but the effort it took to learn it had certainly been worth it, bringing her to this point.

Suddenly, a single shockwave from one of four security bots jumping to the beat knocked her out of her reverie as she floundered to return to the present, her desire to even merely glimpse upon the state of her harpsichord almost overwhelming.

Madame Tatiana was a relentless force of nature, but RAVE.n was a product of a strict upbringing that was committed to her excellence, so the two forces continued to clash. Even as the young adult struggled, she still managed to keep her head above the water as she would swim to the finish line. So close to success, but the most violent waves in the terrible storm had yet to come.

The last phase of the Lights Up Audition was soon to arrive, but RAVE.n believed that she was prepared to end it on both a literal and metaphorical high note.

Just an instant before her focus could be lost – how much had she even been paying attention to the fact that she was still at the audition?, granted she knew she was playing the music she trained her fingers to for several years – she heard the loving voice of her mother speaking gently in her ears. _“Though I might be hard on you now, I want you to remember that I will always love you. …you can do this. I_ know _you can.”_ When her flying machines finally disposed of any lingering bots, she played another dual-handed chromatic scale along the keys to activate the celebratory horns to indicate the end of the phase. With a pause, she cracked her knuckles and blinked once, changing her expression entirely to determination as her gaze remained completely fixated upon Tatiana.

This was the last time she could prove herself to the businesswoman who was in total control of NSR.

As expected, the final phase of the audition was the most agonizing and it required RAVE.n to be at her most passionate and energetic, ignoring the pain she felt in her arms and wrists from the constant movement between keys for the past few minutes. Given her conviction to astound both the audience and the judges with her music, she knew that forcing herself to play would only lead her to possibly committing error, threatening her place as an elite, let alone a music artist, in NSR.

Despite one of the judges certainly finding interest in her music, apparently the eccentric one, the others remained unwavering as though statues.

Remapping the controls on her harpsichord to accommodate for the array of foes she had between her and victory, RAVE.n returned to an unsteady routine following the appearance of all three manners of robot that the audition pit her up against. Given that they all attacked according to the beat of the song, it was easy to learn their patterns but difficult to differentiate one sound from another. Her birds would have a treacherous time making sense of the noise, so she returned to her usage of ammunition to take down the bots relegated to the floor before bringing out her figurative “ _big guns_ ” again to deliver a final blow.

She was so close to victory!

RAVE.n hastened to switch the controls from her birds back to any leftover ammunition in what she hoped would be record time before her harpsichord sustained any more hits, given that her flying drones were slow in movement while they packed so much of a punch in each hit. Even as she could grasp a hold on the battle which lay before her, she never lost view of the stern form of Tatiana, fully engaged in her war of willpower to overcome the odds that she knew had been stacked against her.

In her frenzy to prove to the judges that her efforts to play her composition were worth their precious time, the young adult had very nearly phased out the existence of the stage as she found herself back in a room with only her, the raven-styled harpsichord, and Madame Tatiana Qwartz just beyond it.

Silence pervaded the air as the keys of the harpsichord played a nocturne of her own composition, and the two only kept their gazes on one another to see that the other would finally relent. RAVE.n knew that the battle would be hard, but being in the home stretch invigorated her upon coming so close to victory. Within minutes of playing her nocturne for the Tatiana within her imagination, she felt a sense of elation when it seemed as though a weight had finally been lifted from her shoulders and chest. She knew what that meant. _“It’s over, Madame. I’ve overcome the challenge.”_

_“Why not celebrate your victory, then?”_ , her false memory raspily returned as though mockingly, never giving up her proud perch above RAVE.n. When the celebratory posts had made their appearance to commemorate the completion of the final phase, the harpsichordist moved her hands back into the familiar movement of a dual-handed chromatic scale. The raucous noise of the audience cascaded back to her ears as the judges almost all appeared to be in stunned silence.

Tatiana was the only observer whom had hardly moved an inch since the beginning of the audition, with the sole exception of the small exchanges between herself and the other judges or between herself and the auditioner.

When RAVE.n finished the composition, bringing her fingers down to the highest-pitched keys on the keyboard of the harpsichord to denote its end, she listened to the overwhelming applause of the audience that encompassed her within a solid second, and even two of the judges had seen fit to clap for her, delighted by the performance. RAVE.n smiled faintly, standing from the bench and turning to bow silently in every general direction before standing in front of the judges, awaiting their word. Some gazed at their notes, others kept their focus on her as she kept herself composed with the shock that so many seemed to enjoy her choice of music.

When Tatiana spoke, the auditorium fell utterly quiet in response and the silence became deafening. “So, _Rave-N_ …, how do you think it went?”

If she had to be honest with herself, RAVE.n had not paid so much attention to the sound of her music as she cared to keep up the appearance of her perfection toward the judges, but it was obvious that her music captured the hearts of so many in the auditorium. How the Grand Qwasa factored in, however, was another beast entirely. The excitement of the audience and the amount of power routed to the Qwasa were connected, but that was nothing of her interest. She just wanted to prove herself in front of the faces of NSR.

“Judging by a most wonderfully excited audience, I’d say that it went pretty well,” RAVE.n enunciated confidently as she brought her hands back toward her lower torso as she stepped back slightly. With her answer, the judges would be grading her performance.

“We’ll see about that,” Tatiana stage whispered venomously, yet enough to still be picked up by the ears of the auditioner.

With that, her judgment day had arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are wondering if me posting this chapter now was a mistake, I assure you that it is not. Please, be patient.
> 
> If you have read "Cacophony of Shadows", my other written work for No Straight Roads, then you should know a bit about RAVE.n and her relationship to Tatiana. If you are interested in seeing what RAVE.n looks like, follow this link to my artwork of her:  
> ~ https://www.deviantart.com/shadowdrakkon/art/NO-STRAIGHT-ROADS-RAVE-n-858829076  
> The music that RAVE.n is playing in this chapter is auditorily similar to "絶" (which may translate to "Absolute"), by Ice from Team Grimoire:  
> ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlYFbb1xK2o


	2. A Labor of Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The CEO of NSR never had any real experience with children, so when an infant of ice blue skin, black hair as dark as night, and the most beautiful fluorite-like eyes she had ever seen, literally shows up on her doorstep in a basket, she is left to her own understanding on how to properly care for it. Yet, she wonders why she would willingly ignore all of its shortcomings to see to it that this sweet baby is treated like gold.  
> It is, after all, what might be called a 'labor of love'.

_Eighteen years ago..._

Vinyl City never slept.

That had always been regarded as fact, even while the NSR Tower stood far away from it, its imposing visage dominating the far horizon, and its sole inhabitant occasionally found herself listening to the faint music of the city from high in her ebony pillar. The tower was a metronome to the symphony of the city, playing nothing to her but the all-encompassing noise of the ticking of a clock while it yet gave off no outward sound. In some sweet irony, the otherwise near noiselessness was music to her ears.

Yet, even in her palace at the top of the tower where she craved peace from the ever present music and noise of Vinyl City, there were still times where she felt utterly and truly alone.

Not many could say they had seen her face in the past few years, and her already rare public appearances became ever more scarce as time went by. She felt herself closing off to everyone, even to the district leaders – artists also on her own record label – and she steadily became cold, her fire having long since gone out, her heart turning to stone.

Though few could ever say they saw her, some glimpsed at her fleeting appearances between floors of the tower, in which she had rarely stayed to chat but would always ask if they were well before she disappeared into her office again. For some, that was the only time they had ever seen her, yet her raspy voice was _everywhere_ , all they ever heard during their work hours ahead of returning home in peace, the only one left behind while she would silently have brought herself to the tower penthouse – her _home_ – near midnight.

However, at the cusp of eleven on one evening, she had characteristically lingered long after every other employee in the tower had headed for home, choosing either to sort through the vinyls on her desk and setting them neatly upon stacks of varying height, to complete the unfortunate backlog of paperwork that glared almost accusingly at her for failing to finish it on time, or suffering to manually check that every door in her great ebony pillar was locked.

Had her sight not been tainted by staring upon black ink on white paper until the late evening, she would have felt the need to continue working until she simply could not, at the expense of experiencing strange hallucinations that threatened her sanity. A veritable lack of human beings to interact with had often contributed to a number of those hallucinations, while subsequently suffering from the very certain and loathesome feeling of loneliness that would drive the point home. Such a thing was, however, a price to pay to make sure that the city followed _order_ instead of falling back on its former cycle of unbridled _chaos_.

Everything she did was for the betterment of Vinyl City, no matter how it might have felt to its citizens for the time being. She had the power to change the environment for the better, and she certainly used her position in NSR to her advantage.

Knowing that there was little she could do otherwise to help her present situation, she sighed and stood from her swiveling office chair, leaning slightly over its solid oak surface to a jade bankers lamp to pull down its chain. It would hardly be of any use attempting to work now, she decided, especially when she had been exhausted from repetitive readings and tedious meetings. It was times like this where she felt almost desperate to go home and sleep.

Had her secretary not already gone home, he would have reminded her how beneficial it was to sleep, yet there she would have been, ignoring his advice as she felt justified when she believed Vinyl City would benefit from her intensive work hours. Anything to exact order and judgment to a city that direly needed it.

She pursed her lips. Given that either her secretary or a receptionist in the lobby had been the last to vacate the NSR Tower, they usually locked the doors behind them, but one glance into a security room in the lighthouse – while several others existed throughout the tower – would prove that the only door to the outside was sufficiently locked and that the tower was vacant. After all, it was not an absolute impossibility that someone could sneak up into the tower and plant a bomb while no one but _her_ was still inside.

Some people were _still_ sour about her avoidance of rock music in NSR, and a few of _those_ were uniquely radical in their desires to stop her from bringing order to a city that desperately needed it to survive. After her record label took Vinyl City by storm, the handful of citizens who enjoyed a good rock song were driven far underground, where sleeping dogs _should_ lie. With that, she breathed out slowly and meticulously stepped out of her impeccable office with only one location in mind.

It was after one particular incident that she was forced to make it a habit to check cameras from the security mainframe in the lighthouse in advance of officially stopping working for the evening, granted she was the only personnel allowed inside at any given time unless she elected her confidantes or guards to enter it for that sole purpose if she could not otherwise do it herself. Some could argue that she was paranoid while others believed it to be a new protocol designed for her own safety after multiple attempts on her life.

In the end, she was forced to travel up to the lighthouse every evening, given that it was the closest point to her office that a security room existed for her convenience. While she trusted her employees to keep her safe, they had always been released from work earlier in the day and, by ten, no one but her would be left, and she needed to see for herself that every door was locked or sealed for the night. Some might have argued that it was some form of obsession, yet she still had to do it, no matter how tedious it was just to look.

Her entrance into the elevator at the opposite end of the winding corridor was quiet enough, but a faint noise of raindrops hitting the windows accompanied both subtly ticking timepieces and her lonesomeness as though it faintly whispered into her ears, strange shadows accompanying her tired gaze otherwise trained forward. She shook her head to dispel the experience, choosing to be more in tune to her heels tapping upon the floor with utmost precision in each step as she pressed the switch denoting the highest floor in the tower, listening as the elegant doors closed leisurely.

When she reached the base of the lighthouse, with only the beaming red drifting out from the lantern room lighting her way, she fortunately never needed to step outside into the rain to get inside of it. Opening one door into a room in which a bright array of computer screens were embedded into an expansive cylindrical and dark backdrop, she was met with the camera feed of nearly every room in the tower and a word processor on a pressboard desk that listed each individual room in a geometric, green typeface.

With a bored sigh, she pulled out a chair perpendicular to the word processor and lowered herself into it and soon paused, beginning her work to read the security status of every room in the NSR Tower. It was going to be a while – manually checking that each room was locked and every lamp was switched off – and she was not looking forward to it. “I really _do_ need someone else to do this for me,” she muttered before bringing an aching pair of eyes to the dark screen resting between her and _slumber_.

Barely within a minute, while halfway finished as she had quickly learnt over time how to expedite her efforts, she rested her eyes upon the seventeenth screen on the third row showing the vast lobby which sat at the base of the tower. Its dim lighting still provided the characteristic ambience of the welcoming red room yet without a single employee tending to its fountains or foliage, but panning the camera to view the front doors as she sat back in preparation of checking off the lobby from the word processor, she caught a black splotch just outside of the glass panes separating the wealth of the tower from the grounds bordering it.

Blinking once, the black object vanished. She narrowed her eyes in confusion, projecting the screen onto a substantially larger one to view it closely while still believing it to have been a quick illusion crafted by her struggling gaze, and found a curious triangular shape left behind. With a pause, realizing that it certainly _had_ to be real, she immediately began to suspect that the receptionist who _usually_ stayed late to fax reports to her, had left and dropped her purse clumsily. Either that, or her secretary, but he hardly went anywhere without his briefcase and would know if it went missing.

Knowing that it would do no good to stew over what it could possibly be, she stood from the swiveling chair and immediately set her sights on reaching the ground floor as expeditiously as she could.

Her journey down from the lighthouse was accompanied by the noise of a single golden gear clicking above her as each floor passed her with a constant speed, the sound of rain gradually beginning to increase in volume and concentration. The security room was so nestled into the lighthouse that she had forgotten entirely about the inclement weather, knowing that she would need an umbrella if she were intending to bring the purse back to the receptionist. At this point, the rain would prevent her from getting far, lest it saturate the pale gold pantlegs or even ruin her spiked heels, and she pondered whether or not she should keep the purse safe in the lobby until her return in the morning.

When the elevator alerted her to its reaching the ground floor, she hurried her pace down the inclines to reach the long emptied receptionist desk in the lowest section to scout out an umbrella that could get her outside without any water destroying her fine suit. Yet, upon closer inspection of the object which sat just beyond the barrier of bulletproof glass, the shape was far too _round_ for it to be a purse, _or_ a briefcase for that matter, and that elicited her to open the door to find it locked.

With a pause, she realized that answered _one_ important question, but she was forced to open it to find out precisely _what_ the oblong object, with its long steeple shaped like a semicircle, was. Turning the lock and opening the door just enough to reach down and inspect it, her expression of curiosity turned to a small grimace twisted in confusion. With a pause, ignoring the rain which had fallen upon the very crown of her hair and the faded gold shoulders of her silk suit, her eyes scanned the grounds for person that left it there, knowing that she could not have been hallucinating _that_ if _this_ was left behind.

Humming, her eyes landed on nothing organic, with no black silhouette disappearing in the distance or even hiding out nearby, and she took its protruding spine and felt its texture through a soft, opaque black fabric, carrying it to the desk inside.

Suddenly, the thought crossed her mind that maybe it was some sort of explosive that some radical left behind – _which she would have blindly fallen for in her exhausted state_ – and she mustered the courage to entice her fingers to lift up the veil. What she saw left her nearly breathless, causing her to backstep and trip over her heels toward the candy apple red rug on the floor.

In just moments, it cried. It _wailed_.

She realized that the sound was too _alive_ to be something like an explosive about to detonate, but the noise was still not helping out her poor ears at all. When she could recover from her initial shock, she rose to her feet slowly and covered her ears, advancing upon it to look again beneath the veil for a meticulous observation. “What on Earth…?” It was no purse, briefcase, or even an explosive or gift. It was a _child_ , coiled in a blanket, wrapped up in a carrier basket for safety.

Someone just _abandoned_ it at the tower, and that surprised her greatly. Hardly anyone could know that she lived inside of this tower, yet for this person to leave a baby behind told her that they _had_ known, were in tune to her working hours, or left it there to be seen in the morning by the first person that walked past it. Either way, it was physically present. She would think more on that subject later, when she was unfettered by figuring out the next few minutes after her entire evening flipped upon its head.

When she removed the veil from the basket with her free hand, her eyes rested on a pale blue cherubic face framed by a full head of short black hair, eyes screwed shut as tears leaked from their ducts, mouth opened as it expelled a high-pitched whine.

She panicked. What was she supposed to do with a _baby_? With her usually firm voice now unsettled by this stunning turn of events, she attempted to quell its storm of tears by talking as gently to it as possible, granted her general predisposition of communicating with others had oftentimes been some variation of demanding. “It’s _okay_. It’s alright, I’m not going to hurt you,” she paused, staring at it with worry as it had not stopped its apparently characteristic scream – _when had children been so …_ loud _?_ – before trying again, placing one rough, cracked hand against its soft cheek in the hope of applying some measure of serenity. “How do I…?” She visibly gaped prior to closing her mouth and blinking with realization.

Of the times that she had seen her old friend with that little artistic girl of hers, she noticed that very nearly the only way the girl became tranquil as an infant was…

Taking the bundle carefully into her great arms, she cradled the toddler and rocked it back and forth to soothe it. “ _It’s okay, Baby…_ ,” she whispered breathily, “I’m not going to hurt you.” As if her own voice was like music to its ears, it slowly began to calm down and opened a pair of inquisitive gem-like eyes the color of a blue-violet fluorite, still glistening with unshed tears. Now focused upon its face, she went almost utterly still. “My, what a _beauty_ you are,” she commented softly as the child became serene enough to be more coherent and observant of its surroundings.

Most of its surveillance ended up with a great amount of _watching her_ , but she would regretfully admit that she kept her eyes on it for the entire time. It was hardly a minute into their encounter and she felt as though she had already fallen in love with it. Given her position as the chief executive officer of NSR, the remote possibility of taking care of a youth was beyond the time allotted for managerial duties, but she refused to pay much mind to that now. At this point in time, she was the only one available in the building who could take care of it for the evening, but she surprised herself that she had not minded at all.

“What heartless fools would give you up?”, she questioned sardonically, shaking her head slowly before morphing her lips into a faint smile as if to lighten its mood. She traced its cheek with her finger, and the child quickly grabbed onto it with both tiny hands, exploring with passionate and undying wonder. While she told herself to put the juvenile back into its carrier, she hardly wanted it to let go of it, enjoying the fact that not only was another human being interacting with her, overshadowing her chronic lonesomeness, but the fact that something so small and innocent seemed so utterly enthralled with her.

It was hardly as though she had any beauty to her, but the adolescent viewed her with fresh eyes that had not cared to see such horrid ugliness. Instead, it was indiscriminatory, unable to define a difference between physical elegance and grave repulsiveness. In fact, it seemed quite taken by her, captivated by the powerful businesswoman, no matter what she looked like, instead attracted to her voice and characteristics.

Almost immediately, it covered its mouth while it openly yawned, reminding her that she _should_ be heading home. At this point, upon locking the glass doors one last time for the evening, she gently toted the baby in her arms – who had since closed its eyes and peacefully slumbered within the minute – back to its carrier basket.

Knowing that it would do neither of them any good to keep it down on the bottom floor to be seen by the receptionist in the morning, she realized that the only thing she _could_ do, whether she wanted to or not, was to let it stay in her penthouse until she could find its parents or someone who was more capable of adopting it. Despite that, she did not want to think about giving it up, especially when the youngster was so _perfect_ and happy with her.

“Come on, Baby,” she murmured softly to avoid it from waking up, “Let’s get you upstairs where it’s warm, hm?” With that, finishing her work was left forgotten by the sands of time.

Charting her path back to the elevator so that she could get to her penthouse suite, she toted the carrier in her grand embrace as though she bore a priceless treasure, her eyes almost utterly focused on the baby who quietly slumbered beneath its dark blue snowflake blanket. When she reached the elevator and stood inside of it, pressing a single button to denote the floor of her choosing and waiting patiently on the circular black rug, she watched the infant as though she were its guardian, pondering on the strange fact that the only time it seemed to cry was from the abrupt noise that woke it up.

The rain had not seemed to affect it. Neither had the abhorrent ugliness that was her face. It seemed indiscriminatory of the stony aesthetic of her stern facet, likely taken by her softer character and personality. It shocked her for such a thing to possibly be its intention, since she firmly believed very few actually _cherished_ her presence.

Droplets of water splashing against the window accompanied their ascent further into the tower, and she turned to the rage of the ocean unsettled beneath a coming storm which threatened to break into a squall. It unconsciously bothered her that the child could have been left out in it had she not come in time to take it inside, worried for its safety. Yet, now it was in her arms and it seemed likely she was not about to let it go. …that is, until she would be handing it to the authorities when they found its parents. _When_ , meaning _if_ they could find them. After all, she was unable to keep it since her schedule denied any more time to be dedicated to her own desires.

She kept coming to that conclusion: the fact that she would have no time to take care of this juvenile, but _why_ would she be thinking that she should? The fact that she even _mulled_ over taking it under her wing passively horrified her, given her lack of understanding of children in general, but she believed that her empathy toward others played a substantial part in why she treated it with care. In the end, she repeatedly reminded herself of the impossibility despite her desire to keep this neonate as her own. Logically, little of it dared make sense, but she seemed to throw logic to the wind when this adorable infant came to her literal doorstep, and her empathy overwhelmed her.

What was going to make this any easier? She was not a nanny. She was no mother. She provided nearly no benefits for this adolescent to view her as one or the other, yet she surprised even herself with how she had been acting toward it, and its reaction to _her_ presence as a result.

It was too innocent and carefree to understand the world around it, viewing her as something new and exciting, not something to be scorned and shunned. No, she saw its eyes filled with wonder and curiosity, while the citizens of the city looked upon her in reverence and fear. What a stark contrast it was for this infant to know nothing of who she was to not view her the same way! …what if it might grow up as an example to the world that its mother kept order for good reason? Who could it convince? She could change Vinyl City for the better if she led it the same way as she might bring up this child with proper love and discipline.

It took her an embarrassingly lengthy period of time to realize that the elevator doors had long since opened to the anteroom leading into the penthouse suite, entirely missing the jingle that was the notification of her arrival to the designated floor. Her thoughts had utterly consumed her, and she was thankful that no one was there, or was _awake_ for that matter, to see her fault.

The room preceding her was cylindrical in shape, tiled in a deep grey slate with the marble motif of an analog clock written in Roman numerals resting at its center, gold gilded seams in the stone providing an accent in the dim contemporary lighting, elegant ferns and beautiful ficuses dotting the room at the hours. On the fine, burgundy and wine red walls of the anteroom were four fountains which embraced its contours, water whispering as it fell, in streams, over stacked shale. The only ambient noises were the hum of the waterfalls and the faint ticking of a clock, embedded in the wall above iron doors half of a meter thick.

Despite their weight, the doors opened easily to her, as if beckoned to answer the call of its master when she advanced upon them and lowered the carrier to the floor to bring her hands to its grips. The faint lightness of her home welcomed her with the seemingly omnipresent ticking of a clock and the rain pounding on a window in the living room at the far end of the palatial foyer.

Beneath her heels was a change of tile from dark slate to white marble partially concealed by a dark carpet the color of blood fading into black as it stretched away from the doors. Similar in shape to a rotunda, the center of the foyer was flanked by four gold-gilded Ionic columns towering diagonally from one another, encapsulating the suspended crystal chandelier on the center of the vaulted ceiling as though royally, guiding the curve of two white-carpeted staircases at the side leading up to a single balcony at the back.

She sighed. She was finally _home_.

Despite the tedious board meetings with the finance and the human relations departments, her personal work as the chief executive officer of the record company seemed moderately modest in comparison as she performed her managerial duty of writing corporate decisions on how to effectively make NSR monopolize the music scene as it transitioned away from rock. Now that she managed to make NSR known with the help of an old friend, she had a headquarters, a _base of operations_ , that was like a beacon toward the future, and she looked back at herself just a few years prior, in her rowdy youth, where none of this could have possibly happened.

Needless to say, she was thankful to be home, given the circumstances of the afternoon spilling into the evening. However, now she was not alone.

Her eyes were brought back to the child still peacefully slumbering in its carrier basket, clutching the knitted snowflake blanket tightly as though it were a lifeline, her heart swelling upon looking at it, knowing that it would eventually wake back up and stab Cupids arrow straight into her heart again. She hardly ever acted like this anymore and, yet, it seemed like her emotions unshackled around this babe of precarious origin.

Upon sealing the front doors with two great clock hands carved from gold, she tracked her path to the doorway which led the ultra-modern living room at the opposite end of the rotunda, seeing the curtains slightly parted to allow for a single glimpse of a squall raging outside, she set the carrier upon an ornate Oriental coffee table with a relieved sigh. She slipped off her heels and stretched her aching feet as soon as she met the contemporary sofa anteceding the table, tiredly laying her head upon a pillow of similar grey color. As unremarkably monotonous as the day was, it still exhausted her. It was, _after all_ , her kind of back-breaking work bringing order back into this chaotic city.

She closed her eyes for a second afore hearing the noise of thunder crashing outside of the wall-length window and a piercing whine that followed it, eliciting her to come to the understanding that maybe sleeping in her actual _bed_ was a better idea, granted her muscle memory was for a home that one individual lived in. In this case, it was possible that this baby would be more comfortable and sleep through the storm, leaving her to her own dreams in peace as a result.

In trying to bring the wailing babe to a sense of harmony, she sat up and took the bundle into her arms and rocked it back and forth slowly to the tick-tock of a clock on one of multiple bookcases. If it worked the first time, she figured, the second time should elicit the same results. “Don’t cry. It’s going to be okay,” she told it softly, hushing it with a surprisingly tender voice, “A little thunder isn’t going to hurt you. I won’t let it.”

The infant sniffled and sobbed, but the volume of its screaming had decreased to almost none. At least she was doing _something_ right, but that was the extent of it. What else was she supposed to do? What was it supposed to eat? Did it drink water, juice, wine, champagne, arak, milk…? What would it do to keep itself occupied if she worked or did something that took up her time? When would it need to sleep? When would it wake up? A barrage of questions bombarded her waking thoughts, and she suddenly decided that she had enough of it.

“ _Tomorrow_ ,” she scolded herself, the sapped energy evident in her ever-present rasp, “Think about this tomorrow, you dolt.”

She lifted the baby into her cradling arms and navigated her way toward a glass-rimmed staircase edging dark walls very conveniently situated beneath the master bedroom. She had risen ever so carefully with each cautious step to keep the infant from crying again – fortunate that the noise of rain was all that serenaded them than the drumming of thunder to cause the child to cry once more – yet it seemed all for naught. Even as it continued to whimper, she attempted to suppress the noise while it made unexplainable grabbing gestures toward the carrier that was left behind.

“I know, I _know_ , the carrier looks comfortable enough to sleep in. I’ll put you back in it tomorrow, okay?”, she told it with a noticeable degree of enervation, still annoyed that she had been awoken – had she _really_ been asleep, though? – by the infants abrupt shriek. “Come on, Baby, chin up. You’re going to be fine.” She smiled as if that were to allay its fears, bringing it up further against what was obviously its will. If it wanted anything, it had gone unsaid,, and that solidified the notion that maybe this toddler was little more than a year old if it was unable to articulate its words. …to _her_ knowledge, at least, but she knew very little about children to know certain milestones for their proper development. “ _Wait_ ,” she stopped, prior to her foot meeting the next stair, “I thought you wanted a _bed_. What _do_ you want?”

When she lowered her eyes back to the basket, she spied a beak-like shape protruding from it which, upon closer inspection, seemed to be some sort of stuffed animal. “Alright, _alright_ ,” she concluded with the playful roll of her eyes. Motivating her feet back to the cream carpeted floor of the living room, she noticed that the toddlers hands moved in the direction that the carrier had been from it, confirming that the stuffed animal was exactly what it wanted. Had she not noticed it because it was being laid upon? That answered _one_ question.

Despite it being a menial trek for her just to retrieve the stuffed animal – a fat-looking patchwork bird, apparently – it was a tearful reunion for the child that had been separated from it.

“Was that what you wanted? Could I go to sleep now?”, she asked it in jest, knowing that she would not have a response, giving her the chance to finally step into her bedroom, have a change of clothes, and go to sleep. _If_ her mind permitted, that is.

Ascending the staircase brought them to a basalt floor meeting dark red carpet and even darker walls, a four-poster bed of king size at its far end near another black-tinted wall window. Hardly any other details could be viewed behind the shadows, but it provided every sense of comfort it was supposed to without the excessive vanity. A single lamp illuminated just a small portion of the floor, but it was sufficient to bring herself to it and lay the bundle in her arms onto the softness of the mattress, its bird-shaped stuffed animal gripped even harder than the blanket had been.

She sighed. When she could fortunately leave the youngling to its own devices, which seemed to permit it to relax enough to close its gem-like eyes again, she took to her spacious walk-in-closet of faded gold walls and candy apple carpeting to remove her suit and replace it with the silken nightclothes and robe she oft wore for comfort.

With the turn of her head as she placed a sleeve of the robe over her almost bony shoulder, her eyes landed upon the now slumbering form of the baby on her bed, she could not help but view it with an emotion a mixture of love and protectiveness, but she would never dare admit to anyone the first of those two.

Bare feet padded away from the closet toward the bed with decidedly quieted steps, but the beating of thunder just outside the window had ruined her efforts, causing the child to wake up with another frightened scream. She glanced upward toward the ceiling, as if praying to God, muttering beneath her breath, “ _Please, don’t tell me it’s going to do this the whole night…. I have_ work _in the morning._ ” Quickly coming to its side, she brought it back to her cradling embrace with a deep chested sigh, glimpsing for a second at the digitalized numbers on a clock reading twelve-oh-seven sitting on a slate-topped bedstand.

Instead of rocking her as she had been, she kept the infant firmly wrapped in her warmth for a minute then submerged it partially beneath the marble-motif comforter to entice it to sleep, placing its blanket across it, the stuffed animal still coiled in its short arms, and took to the other side of the mattress to unhook her ruby earrings and to remove the violet shades sitting on the bridge of her nose. While its crying had decreased, it was obvious that it wanted the presence of a human being with it. Maybe its _mother_ , perhaps, or even _her_ , its caretaker for the time being. Yet, without a voice, it was unable to tell her exactly what it wanted, leaving her to guess and second guess.

Cloaking herself in the same comforter, she stretched her hand beneath the child and pulled it closer as its whimpers began to die out into sobs, apparently thankful for the human contact, allowing her ears a rest. “It’s okay, Honey. You can go to sleep now, I’ve got you,” she whispered gently prior switching off the lamplight and closing her eyes, falling into the sweet tendrils of Nod as she permitted exhaustion to overtake her.

_01:10 A.M._

“ _Mama!_ ”, something called at the very edge of her hearing, ears picking up the noise of thunder and bright lights flashing between the curtains almost threateningly, and her eyes opened abruptly, feeling her heart beating through her ribcage while her gaze shot through the darkness to the baby which cried – _again_ – at her side. Did it just…?

No matter, now.

She _had_ to do something about this, otherwise she was bound to have little necessary rest by the time she was supposed to wake up at seven. In the end, she thankfully only needed to spend a few minutes bringing the bundle of joy back to its initial state of calm ahead of putting it to sleep and letting her annoyance taper out before doing the same.

_03:52 A.M._

It hardly felt like any time had passed since she last opened her eyes, but her dreamless sleep ended in another abrupt shriek that caused her to moan in discontent, rapidly coming to the understanding that the thunder had been keeping it awake with apparent horror. When she cradled the crying child in her arms, she whispered as softly as she could muster, her voice groggy with lethargy.

“It’s alright, Sweetie. Nothing’s going to hurt you, okay? Go back to sleep.” Even with her direct response, it hardly seemed to stop for anything like it had not heard her. “What’s wrong…?” In lifting the infant, she found that the blanket had been saturated in some sort of liquid, leaving her to come to terms with what it was and pulling her nose up in reaction to it as soon as she took the blanket to her nostrils, confirming her suspicions. As a result, she felt the bed for any lingering stains.

"Oh, son of a...!" She knew she was _definitely_ not cut out for this, she actively reasoned, yet she adapted rapidly to the situation at hand. Breathing in deeply and breathing out again, she responded to its shortcoming, “It’s okay, Baby, it’s just an accident.” Truthfully, she found herself unable to be angry at this innocent bairn for unwittingly urinating on her bed because it had likely been frightened for one reason or another – thunder, perhaps?, a nightmare? – surprising herself with not only how well she took on the role of a mother on a whim but also her _patience_.

However, her understanding ended there.

She knew she would need to wash the mattress cover and the childs little blanket, but that would mean either sleeping right on the mattress, taking a spot on the floor, or waiting thirty minutes for the sheet to and its blanket to go through the washing machine and another thirty-five minutes to dry. What else would she need to do? Relegate it to its carrier for the rest of the night to keep it from happening again? …no, it might have been in pain by the time morning would come, which would inevitably lead to more crying.

Sitting up with a grimace, she took the infant into her arms, forcing it out of the blanket that it had been wrapped so fittedly in, but taking it away so that she could clean it was easier said than done. Like it was attached at the hip to this inanimate object, the grip on it was shockingly strong for its age. It really did _not_ want to let it go. “You’ll get it back in a few minutes, okay? Come on. Let it go, Baby.”

It shook its head furiously with indignation, refusing to release the fabric from its little hands.

Then, when her eyes shot to the bird that had been left behind, she took it to easily distract the infant, causing it to free the blanket from its small fingers and move its arms in the direction of the stuffed animal instead. When its brilliant pair of blue-violet gems landed on the sight of the blanket being taken, tears welled in the ducts of its eyes before spilling them like streams, pouting with a sob and a faint whine.

Truthfully, it broke her heart to see the child like this, but she wanted it to feel safe, secure, and comfortable with its belongings than to let it sleep like the poor. This baby deserved better than that.

“I _know_ you want your blanket, you sweet little thing,” she told it before handing the bird back to it gently, feeling it wrenched out of her hand as it came into contact with the youth, “You don’t want it wet, do you?”

It pouted and shook its head again, clearly a bit more comfortable with physical communication now.

Her response was proud in nature, “Didn’t think so.” Lifting the youth vicegripping the bird up to her breast while taking the sheet on her mattress in her other hand, she scouted out the laundry room in the faded gold damask corridor bordering her bedroom on a path lit only by crystal-shaped wall sconces. While reaching the position of the washing machine was fast enough, the sorrowful goodbye that the toddler gave its blanket seemed like it dragged on.

Being a few minutes until it and the sheet was fully washed, she lowered herself to the carpeted floor and brought the youth up to her chest to soothe it. In her own fatigue, she craned her back toward the floor and encompassed her arms around the babe that sprawled on her. With the inherent warmth centered beneath her ribcage, it was likely that it helped in lulling the toddler to sleep, yet unable to convince herself to close her eyes again.

_05:37 A.M._

She was not sure when she had fallen back into slumber, but if her dreamless trip to the land of Nod was any indication, it was likely too light and far too hurried for her liking. The certitude which which she opened her eyes to in the ambient lighting of the windowless laundry room reminded her that she needed to procure the sheet and the blanket from the dryer, but she found herself delighting in the fact that the infant was still _thankfully_ asleep.

However, that still provided grave implications. Her eyes had opened because _she_ could not stay asleep, unable to fully comprehend exactly why, given the fact that her mind was suffering from the weight of her expenditure throughout both the day and the evening. Was it that her mental state was full of questions? Had it been that she had never slept on the floor and felt shockingly uncomfortable, despite its softness? She was not sure, yet…

In the end, it was certainly better than the misfortune of seeing hallucinations, given that she was fully occupied and inadvertently never allowed any room for false shadows and strange silhouettes. Hopefully, the vacation from those vile constructs would last.

Bringing herself to her bare feet with the adolescent in tow, she quietly crept to the dryer and pulled out the blanket to wrap it in it safely and swiftly, subsequently removing the sheet and carrying both bundles back to her room. Redressing the bed, she gingerly settled the toddler on its flank before returning to her own and pressing both lackadaisical hands across her face prior to willingly collapsing to the cloud-like bed without disturbing its other inhabitant.

_06:42 A.M._

Her eyes opened to the steadily increasing brightness of the master bedroom, helpless to keep her physical body tranquil enough to sleep after experiencing too much of an awakening stimulation, like a shot of caffeine, throughout the evening, either it be through her raging thoughts or coming to terms with the knowledge that she would be too attentive with some waking stimulation to convince herself to rest and relax. At this point, sleep seemed like a lost cause.

Yet, the reason that she had become more alert this time was – _again_ , she mentally supplied – the whining of the child that she recalled stayed at her side. With a moan, she leaned over and collected the infant human into her arms and rocked her back and forth. While she was not positive of what happened this time, she came to the conclusion that it might have had something to do with a nightmare. The poor baby must have been frightened out of its wits, but at least it had not wet her bed again.

“Feeling better now, Baby…?”, she asked it with an almost pure grogginess in her usual rasp while it leaned back in to her inherent warmth for what might have been comfort.

It was at that point she would refuse to admit that, despite her apparent inability to succumb to slumber this evening, what mattered to her was the child getting enough rest. She knew that while she could go through working for at least two nights without closing her eyes to rest, the baby _craved_ sleep to help it develop. She was fully aware of that much, but she still needed to restore her body from days worth of almost uninterrupted work.

By the time it finally had returned to slumber, she sincerely hoped that it would be the last time during the night she went through this ordeal. After all, she _did_ have work in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is here to set the stage for the story, so it might be slowly paced. The plot, however, will pick up by the next chapter.  
> If you have read this chapter, I thank you for reading all the way through! It is genuinely appreciated.


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